Chapter 137: Obstacle

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Durable as the robes worn by the disciples of the Eternal Flame Clan are, Lu Mei’s fire has left hers in tatters. Her wild hair now falls freely past her shoulders, liberated from the ponytail it was kept in. Wordlessly, Liu Jin removes his upper garment and places it over Lu Mei’s shoulders, making sure to avert his eyes.

Even covered in sweat and soot, Lu Mei is beautiful.

“Always so proper.” Lu Mei chuckles softly but nevertheless holds on to the garment. “I don’t mind if you look. I’d appreciate it. A lady likes to be admired.”

“I’d love to look,” Liu Jin admits, ignoring the blush rising on his face. “But if I did, I might forget about everything else.”

Lu Mei sighs. There is a tired note to it.

“And that would be just terrible, wouldn’t it?”

Liu Jin does not answer right away. The silence that settles into the room is neither awkward nor comfortable.

“My mother was the granddaughter of an Elder of the Red Sky Pavilion,” Lu Mei says at last. “She grew up in luxury and learned to expect nothing but the best. The man she married could not be any different. Indeed, the man my grandfather chose for her was talented, belonged to a clan of equal standing, and enjoyed a good reputation within the Sect. Common wisdom dictated it should be a great marriage, and for a time, it was. They were talented, well-connected, and wealthy. All those things we call virtue.”

Lu Mei lets her head rest against the wall as she speaks; her voice is heavy with melancholy. Her eyes stare at nothing.

“What changed?” Liu Jin asks.

“It is not a matter of what changed but rather what didn’t. My father hit a bottleneck.”

Oh.

The rate at which a cultivator advances is never an even one. A cultivator will have an easy time with certain stages of their development but struggle mightily with others. The reasons are many and varied. The cultivator’s talent. Their resources. Their mental and spiritual state. All those things can be factors. It may also be that none of them are. Regardless, a cultivator will eventually reach a point where he cannot advance no matter how hard he tries.

That is what is called a bottleneck.

Cultivators can run into bottlenecks several times over their journey to Eternity. A cultivator can be impeded by a bottleneck for months, years, and even decades. The line between the talented and the mundane is drawn by a cultivator’s ability to overcome their bottlenecks. The talented keep going.

The mundane are left behind to rot.

“My father was in the late stages of the Earth Realm when it happened. No one paid much attention to it at first. Bottlenecks happen. It was expected my father would overcome it in a few years at most. He was, after all, a talented cultivator, one of the biggest talents of his generation. Everyone expected him to reach the Heaven Realm eventually.”

She says it casually, as though it didn’t matter. Her eyes, however, meet his and beg him to ask the question.

“How long did it take?”

“Decades,” Lu Mei replies. “Decades passed, and my father could not overcome his bottleneck. It is the sort of thing that can strain one’s marriage. Not right away, of course. Even my mother is not so unreasonable. However, time has a way of wearing away one’s patience. No woman wants to be attached to a substandard man, especially when whispers and rumors start flying among her peers and she becomes a target of mockery by association. ”

Lu Mei’s laugh is perfect in the genteel scorn held within.

“My mother did not like that. She did not like that at all, and though she did her best to crush her rivals, she could not deny the inherent problem. My father was no longer one who stood above others but just another common person left behind in the path to Eternity. Suitable for some, but not for her. Thus, her eyes began wandering in search of a better man.”

“Would that not have created trouble within the Red Sky Pavilion?”

If Lu Mei’s mother and father both come from influential clans within the Red Sky Pavilion, Lu Mei’s mother publicly shaming her husband could have greatly strained the relationship between the two clans.

“Perhaps, but if the man was in a high enough position, no one would be able to complain, and my mother had an exceptionally high-ranking man in mind.”

If Liu Jin is right about the flames that had manifested in Lu Mei’s body, her mother had certainly aimed high.

“The Red Sky Pavilion has close ties to the Eternal Flame Clan. It is polite to say we are allied Sects. It is accurate to say the Red Sky Pavilion is a subordinate Sect. Regardless, even among the Sects who have pledged their loyalty to the Eternal Flame Clan, few compare to the Red Sky Pavilion.”

“Like the Golden Fist Sect?”

Lu Mei gives him a flat stare.

“I do hate when you bring up other people when I am talking about myself.”

“My deepest apologies.”

“As I am gentle and magnanimous, I will accept them.” The two share a chuckle. Tension drains away from the room, but only some of it. “But yes, the Golden Fist Sect is one of the few groups that can claim such closeness to the Eternal Flame Clan. My mother intended to take advantage of that closeness.”

“I cannot imagine many would be in a hurry to take a married woman, and if they did, it’d probably be as a concubine, not as a wife.”

Unless, of course, Lu Mei’s mother is a beauty that can overturn a nation.

Which, looking at Lu Mei, is not out of the realm of possibility.

“Oh, men do stupid things for beautiful women all the time, especially one from a good family and in possession of a great deal of talent. My mother taught me men are easily led by their lusts.” She gestures at herself with a flourish. “Considering my existence, it is hard to argue she is wrong.”

Huang Shing’s little quest, Liu Jin supposes, is another such example, though he hasn’t seen Feng Zhi in a rush to marry anyone.

“And yet, your family name is Lu.”

“Patience. I am getting there.” She smiles. “Allow a lady some theatrics when relating her origins. Now, where was I… Right. Of the many branches of the Eternal Flame Clan, the closest to Red Sky City, home of the Red Sky Pavilion, is the Soaring Sparks Valley Branch. It is through the Soaring Sparks Valley Branch that most of our contact with the Eternal Flame Clan is carried out. The Branch Master, Feng Dianzuo, is particularly fond of hunting Spirit Beasts. He will often invite influential people from across the region to take part in Spirit Beast hunts.”

“I am guessing your mother showed a special interest in attending the next one.”

Lu Mei nods. “Indeed. Things aligned for her rather beautifully. Desperate to overcome his bottleneck, my father used all his remaining social capital to gather several cultivation aids and locked himself in isolation. He swore he would not come out until he reached the Heaven Realm.”

“I imagine not many took it seriously.”

“I was not alive back then, but from what I have been able to gather, his isolation was the subject of many jokes. There were bets on whether my father would disappear forever or come out of isolation an even bigger failure than before. By then, my mother was past caring. What mattered was that she had been given an opportunity to fraternize with high-level cultivators without obstacles.”

Obstacle. What a cruel way to refer to a woman’s husband. And yet, Liu Jin doubts most people would disagree with it. His father had been scorned for not being able to use Qi. Similarly, during the time in which he went through Nine-Headed Snake God’s test, Liu Jin was mocked for being stuck in the First Level of the Inner Realm.

How horrible it must have been for Lu Mei’s father, who was subject to far greater expectations. In other places a cultivator in the Earth Realm would have been looked at with awe, yet because of his position, Lu Mei’s father was deemed a failure.

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“My mother and her retinue arrived early so that she may have more time to catch the eye of Branch Master Feng, a task she succeeded in. During the hunt, she made sure to suffer an accident.”

“An accident?” Liu Jin tilts his head to the side. “Whatever for?”

“Why, so she could stay under the tender mercies of the Feng Clan, of course. She had suffered an accident during their hunt. It was only natural for them to treat her before she could make the arduous journey back home,” Lu Mei says, her voice heavy with meaning. “She ended up staying there for almost a year, and by the time she returned, she did so with a child in her arms. Me. It wasn’t the outcome she hoped for, but it was something she could work with, something she’s often fond of reminding me. A Feng-blooded child can be leveraged in many ways. Unfortunately for her, things did not work out as she wished.”

As soon as the tale turns to her mother’s woes, Lu Mei cannot fight a smile. The mix of glee and anger in her voice is an odd thing to hear.

“Your father?”

Lu Mei nods happily.

“Many doubted him, but he proved them wrong. Months after my mother returned to the Red Sky Pavilion, he left isolation as a Heaven Realm cultivator, one strong enough to tip the scales in his favor once more. Now that he was no longer a failure, his clan threw their full support behind him. Under such circumstances, there was no impetus for Branch Master Feng to fight for possession of my mother.”

“I find it hard to imagine your father would have wanted to reclaim your mother after what she did.”

“Oh, he absolutely did. It was a matter of principle, you see. Granted, they had… words, but they have become quite possessive of each other over the years. There was just one little problem in their soon-to-be happy marriage: Me. A girl conceived with a member of the Feng Clan.” Lu Mei runs her fingers through her hair. “A girl whose hair and eyes did not come from her father or mother. I was not my father’s daughter, and everyone knew it. He knew it. It was… unpleasant.”

Liu Jin takes a moment to imagine it. A girl clearly born from an illicit union. The daughter of two high-level cultivators. Proof of the mother’s infidelity. Proof of the father’s shame. A burden yet one too important to be discarded due to her parentage.

“Did my father send you? Did my mother?”

Those are the words Lu Mei said to him in Night Phantasm City.

“That must have been difficult,” Liu Jin says. His Qi reaches out to hers, a wave of empathy transmitted through the link. Lu Mei meets his eyes with warmth.

“I learned to live with it,” Lu Mei says, her tone at odds with the emotions passing through their link. “Unfortunately, something would throw that balance off. Tell me, what do you know about the Eternal Flame?”

“The Eternal Flame is a high-level fire technique only known by a select few,” Liu Jin says, remembering the incident with Feng Hao and Feng Zhi. “Is that incorrect?”

“The description is not altogether wrong, but it lacks accuracy,” Lu Mei replies. “The Eternal Flame is not a technique one learns to use. It is… a connection to a greater power, one like nothing I have ever felt before. I don’t know how it works, but I can feel it inside me.” Lu Mei places a hand on her chest. “At first, I could only access it after careful meditation. As I grew in power, it became easier to do it but also harder to control. Eventually…”

She gestures at the ruined room.

“I’d say this speaks for itself.”

“Is that why you came to the Eternal Flame Clan?”

“It was not the only reason, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the main one. Even though I was aware of the brewing conflict between the sons of Patriarch Feng, only the Eternal Flame Clan could show me what I needed to know. Of course, I didn’t think I’d lose control like this. This… never happened before.”